> The last time I had a business analyst that wanted to write SQL, he tripped over one join and asked me to do the job. SQL is used widely, but it does not work that well for people who are not programmers. HTML and XML were also originally intended for non-programmers - where are they now? They are used by amateurs or enthusiasts sometimes, but most of the time programmers do the job.
At both is my last two jobs (SaaS and e-commerce startups), the marketing teams had several individuals proficient in SQL. Hell, in some ways (complex read only queries) they were probably better than me simply because they did it more often. There existed BI tools and dashboards for many things, but the savvier and more curious individuals always wanted to dig further out experiment with queries before getting them formalized like that.
Members of the email team knew a fair bit of HTML and CSS too. And email is not what I'd consider one an easy HTML medium.
Due to these examples, I can't agree with the article at all. Must be a selection bias experienced by author.
My experience has been there are definitely people who become very proficient with sql while not knowing any other programming but they generally hit a ceiling. For most people they can do joins and some basic nesting but they start getting out of their elements if you mention window functions, ctes etc
I'm just one data point, but this group I'm thinking of uses a LOT of CTEs. Perhaps too many - they seem to always have a bunch in their saved queries, personal notepad, etc and would probably benefit from being allowed to create views so that they'd have smaller queries with fewer WITH clauses.
Seeing things like the above or spreadsheet power users really makes me think that "everyone should learn to code" education / literacy initiatives could be a very good idea if done properly.
Last time I tried to get my coworkers to use sql for a report, they straight face argued that doing all of the logic in code is clearer. So, I suspect it is selection bias, as well. Amazing how hard that is to look past.
At both is my last two jobs (SaaS and e-commerce startups), the marketing teams had several individuals proficient in SQL. Hell, in some ways (complex read only queries) they were probably better than me simply because they did it more often. There existed BI tools and dashboards for many things, but the savvier and more curious individuals always wanted to dig further out experiment with queries before getting them formalized like that.
Members of the email team knew a fair bit of HTML and CSS too. And email is not what I'd consider one an easy HTML medium.
Due to these examples, I can't agree with the article at all. Must be a selection bias experienced by author.